Music Credit: “NY” composed and performed by Kosta T, from the cd Soul Sand, used courtesy of the Free Music Archive.
Jo Reed: From the National Endowment for the Arts. This is Art Works, I’m your host, Josephine Reed. Today, we’re celebrating Todd Goings, a 2024 National Heritage Fellow known for his masterful work restoring and building carousels. Todd’s unique craft combines both artistry and engineering—whether he's meticulously carving intricate wooden animals or ensuring the mechanics beneath them run smoothly, his work keeps these beloved machines spinning and enchanting riders. Not only does Todd restore century-old carousels, but he also builds new ones, blending traditional craftsmanship with modern design elements.
Now, fair warning—Todd’s busy schedule as the "carousel doctor" often has him working on the road, and while the carousels he restores run like a dream, his internet connections... well, let’s just say they can have a few squeaky wheels. But bear with us—Todd’s insights into the world of carousel restoration are well worth the ride!
Todd Goings, welcome and congratulations on being named a 2024 National Heritage Fellow! Let’s talk about carousels. You got to carousels through woodworking which you began doing in your youth. What inspired that initial passion for woodworking?
Todd Goings: I don't really know. It comes from within, I guess. I always spent a lot of time with my grandfather, who was kind of the local town handyman, always working in his shop and playing with wood blocks and nails, plumbing fittings, whatever he had, it didn't really matter. That's kind of how I got started. And I just loved pounding nails in wood. I would pound dozens and dozens of nails into old cut-off two-by-fours and things like that. So that was really got me started, I guess. And then just always wanting to build things. That was always my interest, just really wanting to build things and build things out of wood. That was what was available to me. I'd drag home pallets from an old warehouse down the alley from us, and spend all day tearing them apart, cutting them up into something else and building them into something new. So that was kind of the start.
Jo Reed: How did you make your way to carousel restoration?
Todd Goings: That's probably a good question too, but I don't know if I have a really good answer for it. Getting through high school and shop class and things like that was what I always wanted to do. Do that type of stuff, and then I got out of high school, got into a cabinet shop working. Then cabinet making wasn't, and still isn't a very viable income for one to make a living on. So I searched out other things. I always wanted to find some older person that had a woodworking skill that they could pass on to me. And that was really the search that I put upon myself to try, because I knew I wasn't going to college. I really wasn't a school oriented type of person or school oriented type of learner. So I looked for other things, and just looked at my own hands and my own interests, and went about it that way. But once I started doing that, I figured that was something that I really, really enjoyed. But then I got into industrial pattern making. I spent a lot of time working around sawmills, learning how wood was made, so to speak. You go to the woods, you cut a tree down, you drag it back to the sawmill, process it, dry it and get it ready. I started learning about the different species of wood. That was my own path of trying to teach myself to be an accomplished woodworker in some sort. And when I kind of starved trying to do that in cabinets and custom furniture, I got into industrial pattern making, which was a wood/metal type of system as well, working in the wood, building patterns for castings for the industrial markets of things. And then just happenstance, read an article about a project that was close to where I lived, about a carousel, and the shops were open on Saturday to people come and visit and see the project and see things. And so I just went over and started asking questions and they started asking questions back, and one thing led to another, and that was my introduction into carousels. And they figured out I had skills that might apply into carousels, and I figured out that the carousels were something that might have interest to me, and so that's kind of how it all got going.
Jo Reed: When did you first open your own shop?
Todd Goings: I actually opened my own shop as a cabinetmaker, the person that hired me out of high school and into their shop, I went into partnership with him, and we started a cabinetmaking shop, and of course that's where I starved to death, and had to give that up and go into patternmaking to make a living. And then when things were slow at the place that I was working at with the carousels, kind of got laid off in very early 1993, and I had my own shop anyway set up, so I just went back to that and started back to building patterns and cabinets and things like that. And then the phone started ringing, a few people found out that I was available to go work on their carousel or do something with their carousel, through the carousel network and grapevine, the phone started ringing, so I didn't have much else to do, so I just went and did it. I had no intention of going back into business for myself or even setting up a carousel business at all. It was just something to do, helping a few people out on carousels with some skills that I had picked up, and that's kind of where it grew from there.
Jo Reed: A century separates you from master artisans like W.H. Denzel and Charles Looff. What have you learned from restoring their work that informed your own carvings and creations of carousels?
Todd Goings: They didn't leave books and pictures or anything like that, anything to reference back to. All they left was their work. And so going through the restoration side of things, really studying exactly what they did, you take the paint away, you're back down to the bare wood, and you really get to see all the carving marks and the intimacies of the design, and even see where changes of design came for whatever reason. I study all the carousel animals and facades, and the frames, the mechanisms, everything like that because we build the whole carousel. And something that's been around in a working sense for 100 years, not packed away in somebody's attic or some barn somewhere. A lot of these carousels, they're still out working in amusement parks and municipal parks and things like that. Something lasts 100 years it's got something to teach you. It's got something to teach you on how it was built. I can't imagine that I could build anything better. I can't imagine building something that would last 100 years. So that storybook of trying to look and figure out how they built it, how they blocked it, what kind of materials they used, what shapes were their chisels, the tools that they used and how they put things together. For me, that's something that's not taught anywhere, it's just something you kind of have to figure out. And that's where I like to learn from and still do.
Jo Reed: Your shop in Marion, Ohio, Carousels and Carvings, is known for handling every aspect of carousel building and restoration. Can you describe just a little bit of what goes into carousel restoration and creation? What are the steps? There's a lot going on.
Todd Goings: There is a lot going on. Most people when the word carousel or merry-go-round comes out, they have a picture of a carousel horse or a menagerie animal, that type of thing, but to me, that's just a fancy seat on an amusement device. The whole thing is a carousel. A carousel is a living and dynamic piece. So you got the mechanism with large metal or large timbers that support this structure. And these are structures that support thousands and thousands of pounds, you put a load of adults on a full size park carousel, you've loaded on there anywhere from 16 to 18,000 pounds. To be able to manage that, let alone the artistry that it takes to make all the fancy facades, and the animals and everything like that, the mechanics of it are just amazing. They're very simple, but they're very amazing. And they stood the test of time. They're still doing their job a hundred years later. They're still every 10 minutes loading a full load of people onto it, running around in a circle and stopping and starting and doing it again and again and again. You can go to amusement parks all over the country and see that at work on a hundred plus year old carousel. We're not doing that with anything else. It's just an amazing thing to be able to come into the shop and see the paint shop, see the metal shop, see the wood shop. We have a large area where we set the carousels up, whether we're restoring them or building them, and I have to think that this is kind of what it looked like a hundred years ago in the Denzel shop or the Philadelphia Baldwin Company shop or the Looff shop, where those things were coming together. It's a pretty amazing thought that things are still pretty much done the same way they were back then. It's very long and complicated, because I think about the mechanisms and we design the mechanisms based off of what we've learned on doing the restoration for our new stuff. When something lasts a hundred years, you really can't build a better mousetrap. It's already doing it. So the mechanism is its own thing. And then the craftsmanship that goes into designing the carvings and the facades and all the stuff that I've learned through looking at the restorations. You get your own ideas, you come up with your own thoughts and the world around us asks us to do different things. We don't carve as many horses in today's world, we carve a lot of menageries because that's what the clients are requesting, they want other styles of animals and so judging off that, that's kind of how we set our benchmark to work to the skill of those that came before us and hopefully be able to do them proud somehow.
Jo Reed: So because you also handle the mechanics, what are the challenges of not only restoring the carvings of carousels, but actually ensuring that the mechanical components are functioning smoothly for carousels that you're restoring?
Todd Goings: That's kind of the reality side of things, the romance of the carousel, as everybody likes to think of it, is the animals and the lights and all that other type of stuff, but in reality, it's a pretty serious piece of equipment. It's an amusement device that handles people, runs them around in a circle for three and a half minutes, and this cycle keeps going on and on. So in today's world where we have ride safety standards that we have to meet with carousels. That kind of sobers everybody up a little bit, to make sure that the work that we're doing is properly engineered, and properly executed. Personal safety is number one in my world. It's hard to describe all the stuff that goes into that. It gets so intense because it is an amusement device and the carvings, as great as they are, boils down to they're just a fancy seat on that amusement device.
Jo Reed: I love those fancy seats. I've really come to realize, having grown up in New York City, I grew up with a number of carousels.
Todd Goings: New York City had some great ones.
Jo Reed: And still does. You restored ones like the B&B carousel at Coney Island and Prospect Park's carousel. What are some of the other sort of historic restoration projects that you've worked on that have been really rewarding for you?
Todd Goings: I think they're all rewarding on restoration because it's paying homage to the people who really thought carousels up. I wasn't anything special, I just copied what they did. Being able to keep that tradition alive, and honor their craftsmanship and their skills. We've worked on Jane's Carousel in Brooklyn Bridge Park, the B&B carousel in Coney Island. We take care of a lot of carousels all around the country. We did a really great machine, not as fancy as some of the bigger ones, but still near and dear to the people's heart out in Hydro, Oklahoma, where a small community out there has a carousel in their town, and we were instrumental in being able to save it and bring it back to its former glory. Those are the ones that you really get attached to, because you meet the people and you see how hard they worked to get the carousel to this spot. To get it back together, it's just amazing, the people that you meet that are working on these carousels. To be able to just be a part and do our part in connecting with these communities from all over the country, and the people from all over the country, to save something that's so near and dear to their hearts is just very rewarding to me personally. Working on a carousel that's 100 years old. The time that I spent on it, the 20, 30 years that I've been acquainted with any one particular carousel, it's just a small time of its life. My job is to care for it, preserve it and get it to the next generation, like somebody did before me. That's very rewarding.
Jo Reed: You're known as the carousel doctor, traveling around the country, maintaining carousels, and you're on the road now. Where are you, North Carolina?
Todd Goings: Yeah, we're in Raleigh, North Carolina, here working at Pullen Park, another great municipal carousel.
Jo Reed: So what does a typical pre-season or post-season checkup involve?
Todd Goings: On this trip in particular, we're doing paint touch-up and wood repair, so we're working on the carousel—literally on the carousel on site. We're fixing legs and fixing ears and tails and doing all the stuff to keep the animals together. Sanding them and doing the paint work and getting them touched back up, varnishing and all that type of stuff. And then also while I'm here you know, we'll be going over the machine. It's the end of the season, and we kind of picked this time because it's a good time that the ridership's down, kids have gone back to school. So we're not inconveniencing the people who want to ride it. Also looking at the mechanism to make sure if there's anything that needs to be done mechanically over the winter, that needs to be fixed or repaired or adjusted, that we have time to do that, to kind of get things ready for the next season that'll be coming up. This is a 110-year-old carousel, or excuse me, it's a 1910 carousel, so it's 114 years old. It's been doing its job for a lot of years, and again I keep going back to it, all the people that worked on it before I did, they got it to me and now my job is to get it to the next generation.
Jo Reed: It's such a mixture of craftsmanship and of artistry and it's utilitarian. A carousel needs to be ridden. It's just such a wonderful tradition. When did you begin to build your own carousels? What was the first one that you built?
Todd Goings: It starts off slow, I guess. We started out, again, doing restoration and working on things for other people. It eventually kept moving on to being able to design and build our own machines. I would love to do more of that, but it's almost two separate type of businesses. The restoration, we're going out disassembling, bringing things back and going over things, doing it that way. The new stuff, we're ordering piles of new materials, metal and wood, things like that, going through engineering and then fabricating everything. So one goes to the other, but they're very different on the other hand as well. We get to work with the clients to come up with not just our designs, but their dream of a carousel as well, so that what we're building fits the new thought of carousels in the 21st century.
Jo Reed: Right, because your carousels have contemporary design elements, they're wheelchair accessible chariots, for example, and you have different animal figures. How do you approach sort of blending the traditional craftsmanship that you bring with these contemporary elements?
Todd Goings: For us, the craftsmanship side of it is we like to still build in a traditional way. I still love to build out of wood, carve things out of wood, in the way they did it before. I still like to use my chisels and by hand carve and whittle things out of the block of wood. That keeps us grounded there, I think. And then using the designs and the requirements of today, like ADA, handicap accessibility on amusement devices. And for me personally, I have a special spot in my heart for that and those folks. I want to give them the same ride experience, if not better, so that the carousel, so we get to design things that are interactive for those patrons so that they have something to ride in, they have something to touch and feel, all the sensory shifts that you get when you're getting on your carousel horse or carousel animal. That way, everybody gets the same quality of ride. I always try to make sure everybody has something on the carousel that gives them that break from life for three and a half minutes, because that's what the carousel is about. You kind of step onto it, and you go into the fantasy kind of dreamland of carousels, and whirl around and have fun and laugh, and see your friends and family, that's really what it's about. That's why ADA is such a personal thing to me is to be able to do that. Some carousels are handicap accessible, but they're not as engaging, the ride isn't as engaging. That's where I try to separate myself a little bit in the artistry, and push the traditional artistry into the contemporary setting, so that you still have that same quality of life, whether you're sitting on a carousel animal, or you happen to have to ride the carousel in a wheelchair. I want them to feel the wind in their face, and see the people around them, and wave to the people that are going by. And when they're riding the carousel, that's when you see people on a carousel and you step back and watch it, they really don't care who I was to build the carousel, who designed it, who painted it, they want to engage in it on their level, they want to pick out their favorite animal, their favorite color, all kinds of reasons. If I've done my job right, they can do that, because they have that engagement and they take it and put into it what they want and get out of it and their experience, which is great.
Jo Reed: How many people do you employ at Carousels and Carvings?
Todd Goings: Counting me, there's 18 of us right at the moment, and I'm very fortunate to be able to have such a great staff. None of them were really carousel people before they came to work. All of them, the same as me, really didn't know anything about a carousel and didn't know how it would apply to them and their trades, whether they're fabricators in the metal shop or machinists or painters in the paint shop, because they painted other things. They painted murals and pictures and sculpted clay and did different things, all the way to the folks in the wood shop who were cabinet makers and furniture restorers and people like that, and then to be able to pull all of them together to do their specific thing, but then everybody wears a lot of hats. I'm very fortunate to have people like that who want to help me do what it is I want to do, which is build carousels and work on carousels.
Jo Reed: I'm wondering, after 35 years in the carousel world, what do you hope your legacy will be in preserving and advancing this extraordinary piece of craftsmanship and art, and just magic?
Todd Goings: I hope people look back and think I was a fairly reasonably decent wood carver and was able to do that. I hope that they look back and see that the work that I've done on the mechanisms and the whole carousels and trying to keep them together and functioning properly and safely, that I hope that they look and see that was the legacy that we're trying to push forward, and trying to find folks that are interested in learning also how to take care of them past me. Now, after 35 years you kind of maybe stand up and take a look around and say, well, I did all this stuff and I was lucky enough and fortunate enough to be part of all these carousels and projects from the last 35 years. Now I want to teach that and give that opportunity to others. And whether it's in the carving in the woodshop or working on carousels as a unit, trying to teach people how to take care of them and how to care for them on a daily basis, an annual basis, advise safety standards, things like that, as well as being able to try to further people in the skills of carving and woodworking, some of those things that seems to be going to the wayside a little bit. People aren't getting into it, people think carving, you use a chisel, that's slow, that's the old way. Nobody does that anymore. But if you know your craft, it's really still about the most efficient way to build and construct these animals for carousels.
Jo Reed: You were named a 2024 National Heritage Fellow. How did it feel it felt to receive that recognition.
Todd Goings: It was certainly very humbling to be able to think that somebody's looking at what I do. I never really thought much about anything like that, and learning about the others that had been past recipients, as well as recipients in my group of the 2024 class, I was very honored and humbled. There's a whole lot of talented craftspeople and artisans out there that are as deserving as I think I am, or more deserving than I am, but it's just a hard thing to describe. It took me a little bit when we were all there and finally got together as a group in Washington, D.C. to really feel like I was part of the group, because I felt like why would they pick me, I'm just the guy that works on carousels. I spend my whole days going in circles. (laughs)
Jo Reed: One of the things that happened while you were here for the National Heritage events is you took a trip to Glen Echo Park, to see one of the carousels that you worked on, to ride on it. How did it feel to revisit that carousel, and what was the experience like sharing your work with the other fellows who went along with you?
Todd Goings: It was amazing. I was so happy to be able to share that with the fellows that came and did go on the carousel, but it did what carousels are supposed to do, it takes you into that fantasy for three and a half minutes, and you either go back to the time when you were a kid and riding the carousel, or for the first time riding the carousel and seeing how magical it could be, and being able to touch it and interact with it, it's a giant piece of interactive art, commercial art that people can climb on and get on and walk around and touch and feel and ride. When you could share that with people, the best thing ever is when you stand back and watch everybody get on the carousel, and hoop and holler, and it starts moving and they're happy and excited, they've forgotten about all their problems for a very short period of time, but they're just having fun and waving at each other and looking back at each other, having fun and that's what keeps me doing. They got that experience and I'm happy to be a small part of providing that
Jo Reed: I think that is a great place to leave it. Todd, it's such a well-deserved honor. You make magic, and I think it's great and I so appreciate it. I really appreciate you giving me your time after a long day of doctoring carousels.
Todd Goings: Always happy to. Glad to meet you, glad to meet everybody that was part of the NEA. Humbled that they chose somebody like myself to represent the carousel world and I'll work hard to live up to that.
Jo Reed: That was 2024 National Heritage Fellow carousel carver and restorationist Todd Goings. You can keep up with Todd’s work at Carousels and Carvings.com And check out the video we produced about his work. It’s on Todd’s page on the NEA website at arts.gov. We’ll have links in our show notes.
You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts, Follow us wherever you get your podcasts and if you like us, leave a rating—it helps other people who love the arts to find us. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.
